How I saved Kenyatta

Forty-two years ago Kenya was in a state of mourning following the assassination of flamboyant Cabinet minister Thomas Joseph Mboya.

Mboya was shot dead outside a chemist on Nairobi’s Moi Avenue, and his death changed the political mood in the country.

Some people even wondered whether the Kenyatta government – suspected by many of conspiracy or complicity in the killing – would survive the subsequent backlash.

Four days after the assassination, Mboya’s requiem mass was planned for the Holy Family Basilica and President Jomo Kenyatta led the Cabinet in paying their last respects to the man.

Perhaps reading the mood in the country, the Kenya Army moved in to secure the grounds ahead of the President’s entry. At the centre of the action was an army officer, Major Shadrack Muiu.

As the 42nd anniversary of Mboya’s death was marked last Wednesday, Maj Muiu, now a retired 70-year-old man living in his ranch in Sultan Hamud, Makueni county, spoke for the first time about the events of July 1969.

He recalled how he used soldiers to protect the President from siege by an angry crowd of mourners baying for blood.

He said on the fateful day a large crowd had gathered inside and outside the cathedral by 11am.

Besides the soldiers, the General Service Unit personnel, armed to the teeth, had taken positions in the streets and on the rooftops of buildings near the venue.

Between the cathedral’s main gate overlooking the InterContinental Hotel and the entrance to the church 120 soldiers from the ‘A’ Company of the Kenya Army’s 5th Battalion had made a formation, leaving just a path for the commander-in-chief. Maj Muiu commanded them.

He says there were very tense moments as the hearse made its way to the cathedral followed by Mboya’s grieving family members and senior government officials.

The coffin was then carried into the cathedral and placed on a catafalque. But when the presidential motorcade approached all hell broke loose.

The crowd shouting “ua! ua! (kill, kill!)” surged and attempted to block the motorcade. Then stones and shoes began flying from all directions. The President was under siege.

“Tom Mboya, one of Kenya’s prominent sons, was ruthlessly gunned down and a requiem mass was being held four days after his death.

The President had come to attend as he had lost a close aide. We did not expect trouble until they started shouting ‘kill, kill,’” Maj Muiu told Lifestyle.

“There was no time to waste. We had to act fast. I gave orders to the company to make an outward turn while at the same time instructing part of the squad to give the President cover as the stones flew in.”

Then they turned on the crowd. “Using tear gas the police charged at the crowd. The whole compound was filled with tear gas fumes. Some (fumes) found their way inside the cathedral. It was hell on earth,” the former army man recalled.

The Daily Nation of July 9, 1969 reported: “President Kenyatta entered the Cathedral with his eyes streaming tears as a result of the gas… while the solemn mass continued inside the Cathedral mobs ran wild outside.”

Maj Muiu said they considered whisking the President out of the Holy Family Basilica but Mzee was adamant.

He said: “Kwani nimekuja kufanya nini? Tumekuja maombi ya shujaa lazima tutaingia kanisani na tumalize mambo ya leo. (Why did I come here in the first place? We are here for prayers for the hero and we must enter the cathedral and finish what we came to do here today.)”

Maj Muiu said Mzee Kenyatta’s courage in such a “worrying situation” left him dumbfounded.

“He was so calm and defiant at the same time. We managed to push the trouble makers, many of them university students, out of the central business district and the mass went on,” he said.

He says the military was saddened by Mboya’s killing. “But one good thing about the army is that we saw the 1969 trouble as a civilian problem and hence we ensured that the security of the country was not compromised as we looked forward to the civilian government to sort out the issue.”

Maj Muiu retired from the army in 1978 to join the civil service. Before his retirement, he had been among the brains behind the formation of Kenya Army’s Western Brigade in 1976.

The new brigade was used to prevent Somali forces from passing through Kenya to attack Ogaden, a disputed region between Somalia and Ethiopia in the conflict that had started in 1963.

Kenya, too, had a problem with Somalia as the latter had laid claim to a big chunk of the North Eastern Province.

So he was appointed the first indigenous commandant of the Administration Police by President Moi in 1978. He took over from Maj Barrow, a Briton.

Many civil servants, some of whom rose through the ranks to seniority, went through training at the hands of Maj Muiu at the Administration Police Training College in Embakasi.

Among them are AP commandant Kinuthia Mbugua, permanent secretary Francis Kimemia, Makueni MP Peter Kiilu and Rift Valley PC Osman Warfa.

“I remember Mbugua very well. He came to train as a district officer. He was sharp and just good in many ways.

“When he completed his course I retained him for I had seen in him leadership qualities and someone who was fit to lead the force in the future,” Maj Muiu said.

Mr Mbugua took over from Maj Muiu in 1984 when he retired. After nine years as the AP commandant, Mr Mbugua was appointed district commissioner. He made a comeback as commandant in 2003.

Maj Muiu says he was instrumental in designing the uniforms of the Kenya Police, Administration Police, and provincial administrators.

“Before 1978 police wore shorts, while provincial administrators put on civilian clothes. We changed the set-up such that police started wearing trousers while uniform was set up for PCs, DCs, Dos and chiefs,” he said.

“In 1978 I took over a force which was discredited in many ways. Our officers had the lowest level of education, I thought it wise to build a model school so that their children could have better education than them hence the idea behind the starting of Utawala Academy,” he said.

Outside the AP, Maj Muiu, who retired as a service commander, played a role in the creation of the Kenya Wildlife Rangers tactical wing, Marine Rangers and the Kenya Airport security and helped the units to create a command system with uniform and equipment. He left public service in 1984 to run his ranch.

A born-again Christian, Maj Muiu studied as he ran his business and today he has a degree in human resource management from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom; a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from the United States International University and a honorary doctorate from the Faith International Theological Seminary in Washington, US.
Maj Muiu says lack of true leadership has impeded development in Kenya.

“We have seen managers but not true leaders. A manager can decide to either build or destroy an enterprise a true leader lives to his billing,” he said.

In retirement Maj Muiu has not had it smooth all the way. Sometime in 2004 a group of men led by then Makueni MP Prof Kivutha Kibwana invaded his land in Sultan Hamud and started sub-dividing it among themselves.

“I took the whole thing calmly. It was however traumatising to my family. I felt that, as a person who had done a lot for this country, there was a dignified way of treating me in retirement,” he said.

With his wife Esther a former teacher at Pangani Girls High School in Nairobi, he has helped educate many youths in his area.

They own a school, Oasis Girls and have the Goodwill Club, which feeds disadvantaged pupils in Nairobi’s Kibera, Dagoretti and Mathare slums.

The couple has four children, Mathew, Ruth, Samuel and David, who are all married. Maj Muiu says the high rate of unemployment can be reversed if agricultural land is fully utilised.

“Mzee Jomo Kenyatta encouraged Kenyans to go back to the land and help alleviate poverty, diseases and illiteracy. Unfortunately, we are yet to fully do that,” he said.